1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image generating apparatus and an image regenerating apparatus, specifically, to an image generating apparatus and an image regenerating apparatus regenerating a plurality of image data photographed from a plurality of viewpoint position as a three-dimensional image or a moving image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, such operations have been being executed that an three-dimensional image (video image) and a panoramic image are photographed by an electronic camera such as a digital camera and a digital video camera, and a stereoscopic three-dimensional image (3D image), a wide-ranging landscape image (panoramic image), and the like are regenerated by an image displaying apparatus.
In such a photographing of a three-dimensional image, a three-dimensional image can be obtained by synthesizing a multi-viewpoint image obtained by photographing with a plurality of photographing apparatus from a plurality of different viewpoints (for example, photographing with two photographing apparatuses from two viewpoints as corresponding to both eyes). A three-dimensional image data (digital image data) obtained as the above is recorded and stored in a recording medium such as a magnetic disk, optical disk, and a semiconductor memory.
The variety of technologies has been conventionally known which record and store digital image data expressing such a multi-viewpoint image (and a three-dimensional image obtained from the multi-viewpoint image).
For example, the digital storing apparatus is known which includes digital image description including a header defined by standards, image data coded by standards, and an image terminal portion including non-standard meta-data located at a terminal end of the image data (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-299016, and the like).
For example, such an image data generating apparatus and an image data regenerating apparatus are known that when data for three-dimensionally displaying an image is generated, a plurality of image data corresponding to each of a plurality of viewpoints is multiplexed, and file names of the plurality of image data are caused to include a common part, and when image information included in the image data is three-dimensional image, the symbol is implanted in a thumbnail image, which indicates that the image information included in the image data is a three-dimensional image (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-274091, and the like).
For example, the photographing apparatus is known which images a stereo image configured with data of viewpoints which are apart from each other approximately by parallax with one imaging element by using a mirror-type stereo adapter, provides a plurality of photographing image frames corresponding to monocular images in an imaging area of the imaging element, and generates the stereo image, which is a single image, with the plurality of monocular images obtained from the photographing image frames (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-77942, and the like).
However, for example, if an image is tried to be regenerated based on image data by a general-purpose regenerating apparatus, which is obtained from an image description by the digital storing apparatus according to the above Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-299016, the general-purpose regenerating apparatus can utilize only image data recorded in a standard format, so that there exists such a problem that the non-standard meta-data located at a terminal end of the image data is lost.
For example, if image data is tried to be utilized by the general-purpose regenerating apparatus, which is generated by the image data generating apparatus according to the above Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-274091, there exists such a problem that depending on a method for combining images, when being separately recorded, each data is scattered in a file operation, or cannot be used to regenerate an image by the general-purpose regenerating apparatus other than a exclusive-use apparatus.
Furthermore, for example, since image data photographed by the photographing apparatus according to the above Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-77942 is image data obtained by synthesizing a plurality of scenes in an image, when a user tries to regenerate the image based on this image data, who does not know that this image data has been photographed by such a photographing apparatus, the image obtained by synthesizing a plurality of scenes in one image is regenerated, so that there exists such a problem that this user can not discriminate whether or not it is a failure of an apparatus.